In this last post of 2005, I wanted to review the struggles those of us who want to get the government out of the religion cheerleading business.
Secular Left Posts
A 3 judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court ruled on Tuesday December 20th that a 10 Commandments display in Mercer County Kentucky was not unconstitutional.
The case brought by the ACLU, concerned the Commandments viewed alongside nine other documents, including the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence at the Mercer County courthouse in Harrodsburg.
The court used the recent precedent of McCreary County, Ky., v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky that was decided by the US Supreme Court this past June.
The court used the common historical sham to justify the presence of the Decalogue and gave the ACLU some lumps for their involvement in the case.
In 2005, the mayor didn’t put up the Navtivity scene. He claimed that road work in front of city hall made it too difficult to keep the scene safe from damage. He intends to put it back up in 2006 along with symbols from other religions:
McPherson said he already has approved a symbol celebrating the winter solstice and another for the Hindu religion — a partman, part-eagle deity called Garuda who sometimes represents the sun.
Of course if he plans on including such symbols then he also needs one from Kwanzaa, Jain, Sikh, Witchcraft, magick, the occult, Sumerian, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Islamic, Wicca, Neopaganism, Druid, Celtic, and on and on. If Mayor McPherson says no to any religious symbol then he is risking the city of Reynoldsburg to a law suit.
Just like in 2004, McPherson is ignoring the law and even the advice of his own City Attorney.
We are told we are “affected” by skepticism that we only believe what we see. Our minds are small, we are told, unable to grasp the whole “truth” of the vast universe. We are told that there would no art or romance and we would live in a dreary world indeed. We are told children need to believe or all light in the world would be extinguished — What the hell!?!
What is interesting about the editorial is if you substitute “Jesus” or “God” for “Santa Claus” you can read some of the very same arguments used to rebut those who don’t believe in any of them.
Here is how I rewrite the editorial had it come to me in 1897:
Virginia, your little friends are right. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. We may not know everything about this great universe of ours, but we know there is the possibility we may learn.
Read more in the latest episode of Secular Left
On December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III, In The United States District Court For The Middle District Of Pennsylvania, ruled that the Dover District School Board violated the US Constitution when they changed the 9th grade Biology curriculum to include Intelligent Design (ID).
Some of the members of the Board who voted for the change didn’t even know what ID was all about.
The Judge also took to task some members who lied under oath and tried to cover their tracks when the change caused some issues for the community.
Judge in Dover case rules in favor of the parents who wanted to keep ID out of their children’s classroom
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion.
Jones wrote that he wasn’t saying the intelligent design concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed, saying its advocates “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors.”
But, he wrote, “our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”
More later —